This is a Golden Age for health care. But at the same time new treatments and cures are being developed, Americans are properly concerned about costs. How can the health care system continue to innovate while providing value?
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Our NewsletterIssue No. 69: FDA Approves 53 New Drugs in 2020 Despite Challenges of COVID, and 2021 Off to Record-Setting Pace
As officials of the Biden Administration consider changes to health care policy, they might want to take notice of how well drug innovation is working – and why. Of the five vaccines against COVID-19 either being widely distributed or in final Phase 3 clinical trials, three were developed by U.S. companies and one by a U.S.-German partnership. The only FDA-approved therapeutic for COVID was also developed by a U.S. firm. Just as remarkable, despite directing tens of billions of dollars to address the challenge of the coronavirus and despite having clinical trials curtailed by the pandemic, pharmaceutical manufacturers in 2020 won approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for 53 “new molecular entities and new therapeutic biological products.” That’s the second-highest total of novel drug approvals in history. The record, 59 new drugs, was set in 2018. Already, in the first 62 days of 2021, the FDA has approved 11 new medicines, a pace that would break the 2018 mark. Between 2018 and 2020, the FDA has approved 160 novel medicines, or 42% more than in any such period since 1938, when President Roosevelt signed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Between 2007 and 2010, for example, just 71 novel drugs were approved. The total of 53 drugs for 2020 does not tell the whole story of innovation last year. The figure does not include vaccines, blood products, cellular and gene therapy products, plasma derivates, and other therapies approved by the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Among those biologic approvals were a meningococcal vaccine, a treatment for bleeding disorders suffered by patients with hemophilia, and T-cell immunotherapy for a type of lymphoma that currently has a five-year survival rate of only 50%. Read More Here. |
What Others Are Saying"The anger directed at the pharmaceutical and biotech industries overall is misdirected. The single biggest driving force for increased health-care spending in the U.S. is the rising cost of labor, not drugs." "Even if pharmaceutical spending were rising as a share of total health care spending, but that rise was due to pharmaceutical investments driving down expenditures in other health care areas (e.g. a reduced need for more expensive surgeries), then it would still be inaccurate to argue that pharmaceutical spending is driving overall health care inflation." |
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Cost-of-Health-Care News (CHCN) was launched on November 30, 2016, with the aim of providing news and analysis regarding a critical public-policy concern: the costs and pricing of health care. CHCN is published by EAH Strategies, headquartered in Grand Rapids, Mich.